Even when someone cheerfully tells you, "Let's collapse!"... you might wonder, what exactly am I supposed to collapse?
It is the "values," "ways of thinking," and "fixed beliefs" that make you suffer and narrow you.
Many people who struggle with their emotions hold "hardened" values and ways of thinking. It feels like being under a "spell of assumptions." Even when your mind understands this, your heart and body often cannot keep up. Let's use essential oils to release the emotions and emotional memories stored inside your cells, while simultaneously collapsing those mental walls inside your head.
In this course, depending on each person's unique life story and situation, we will identify what kind of beliefs are causing them suffering. First, we will do the work of untangling those assumptions in your head. Once they are thoroughly unlocked in your mind, we release them with the oils.
Breaking down the things you have taken for "granted" is an important process in emotional release.
Here, "granted" refers to "what you consider common sense" or "the assumptions you have believed to be true."
What you take for granted, what you believe is common sense, and where you place your standards of value—all of these are heavily influenced by your environment and past experiences. Having traveled to many countries and lived in at least three completely different countries, I came to know how much I had been making myself suffer by living within a narrow perspective and set of values. Living among people with entirely different ways of thinking and customs often brought moments of discomfort or shock. Yet, by cross-referencing the things I want to cherish—my common sense as a Japanese person, human morals, and my own sensitivity and values—I live by breaking down the "assumptions" that narrow my mind, and rebuilding. Today, I feel that the common sense and values inside me are like a cage of "assumptions."
When I look back at the old days when I was suffering from my own emotions, I was full of these assumptions. But they don't break easily. When they do break, it comes with a shock. In some cases, it's a considerable impact. Because your existing way of thinking is being destroyed, there is anxiety and fear that you are denying your past self, or that if it breaks, you will break and disappear. In the beginning, I also resisted fiercely within myself to protect my values. However, after experiencing this destruction three or four times, I learned that although the collapse of past beliefs and values leaves you in a temporary, unstable state of having nothing to hold onto, rebuilding always follows. Once that reconstruction is complete, you find yourself perceiving things with a vision that is one size larger than before.
If a destruction of beliefs is necessary during the course, but it simply won't break (due to stubbornness or hardened thinking), I may say harsh things that I would rather not say. But Crystallize's emotional release is not healing. It also means destroying and letting go of what you have taken for "granted" and your "assumptions." In the course, I will do my best too, so that we can manage this part—the "collapse and rebuild." It's a three-legged race.
I live abroad from time to time. The discomfort and shocks that happen in a foreign life, where everything is different, are much easier to notice because they are louder and more intense than those in Japan. But how do we feel them and allow ourselves to collapse while living in Japan?
In a foreign country, habits, history, and religion are all different. If the climate is different, the way of living changes. If the history and social systems differ, economic concepts, value standards, habits, thoughts, and attitudes differ too. There are many things you don't want to understand or cannot accept. Within all of this, the important thing is that in the process behind each one of these things, there are many, many stories. The stories and circumstances shaped by so many intersecting influences are never something that can be easily understood. Just as your life has had various stories and circumstances, everyone—everyone—has their own circumstances and stories. Even among fellow Japanese people, everyone has different circumstances and stories. "Our ways of thinking are different." "I am not understood." "I don't understand them." "I can't accept this." "What they are doing is infuriating..."
Discomfort is an important sign.
Why do you feel this discomfort? Why do you sense it?
It is because the other person and you are different.
Being "different" points to who you are and what kind of person you are. Discomfort is a state where "yourself" is sending you a signal from within. However, discomfort is often not pleasant. It often makes you feel excluded or rejected.
When you feel discomfort, try to imagine the other person's standpoint—or rather, the story of their life. From there, think about their position and try to put yourself in it. This is where imagination, flexible thinking, and experience come into play. Think, "What would I do if I were them?" When you do, always make sure to imagine that person's life "story." Just as you have your own circumstances and stories, they have theirs. This also leads to understanding others. Once you understand, the anger often fades away.
You don't just collapse once and call it a day. You collapse and grow one size larger, then you collapse again and grow another size... Step by step, your way of thinking and your horizon expand. After the program ends, you can retake the course, but please use this course to gain the "experience" so you can eventually do this work on your own.
I believe the human mind is full of "assumptions." Back when people didn't know the Earth was round, they "assumed" it ended beyond the horizon, and most people never questioned it. Even things scientifically proven today may see their theories change 30 years from now.
Imagine someone who has convinced themselves, "I am ugly." What is the standard, and who decided that? Are they comparing themselves to idols or beautiful actresses? Those people are special. They are special because their appearance, as one important element, has "commercial value," which is why agencies sell them. The people with high commercial value who sold well are the ones who appear where we can see them.
When I was a child, I was very overweight, and my mother and sister kept saying words to me like "strange," "ugly," and "pig." I believed that I was "strange," "ugly," and "a pig," and that my living, my existing, was a nuisance. Looking back, a child with few resources (experience) to think for themselves will come to believe it if they are told so constantly. When I was in my third year of junior high school, I went on a diet and lost 15 kilograms, but I still carried the belief that "being fat is a sin." Even as an adult, whenever I gained weight, I was assaulted by guilt and self-loathing. I think that "guilt" and "loathing" made me a disappointing person, in appearance and energetically. And I think this is also connected to why I developed bulimia under the influence of stress.
Now, in Cuba, there are quite a lot of heavy women. Being there makes me forget that I am overweight. Even if someone in Japan thinks I'm fat, I've come to feel, "Am I fat? Is that a problem?"
I think that thinking "I can't do it" is also, in most cases, an assumption, unless it is something truly out of reach. One reason you "can't" is simply because you lack the "experience," and you cannot gain "experience" without taking "action." I started learning Spanish at the age of 45. I am terrible at memorization, but because I knew my weaknesses, I was able to learn the basics of Spanish efficiently using a method that suited me. I haven't studied much since then, so my Spanish hasn't improved, but I manage to live in Cuba. The idea that you cannot study new things once you pass 40 is a lie. It is a mere "assumption." Those who believe they "cannot" indeed will not.
"I am hated."
If you feel that, ask yourself "why" you think that. There is bound to be a story behind it.
"Do you like yourself?" If you dislike yourself, then you are accepting the version of you that "deserves to be hated."
Conversely, there is also the assumption of "I can do it!" Even if someone isn't attractive to anyone's eye but thinks, "I'm hot," I don't think there is any problem with them "thinking" so. The important thing is "how you view and think about yourself." The world you see is entirely different depending on each person's "assumptions."
Because an "assumption" is something you've unconsciously convinced yourself of, you often don't notice it. Therefore, during the course, if I feel there is something that might be an assumption, we will look at it together and think: "Is this really true?", "Is it physically impossible, or is it just an assumption?" We will find the causes and elements that created it, and break the spell of the assumptions you have cast on yourself.
For example, there are people who say, "I was forced to work overtime."
Were they really forced? Will they be killed if they don't work overtime?
Most likely, they unconsciously weighed the act of working overtime against the fear of feeling excluded, being talked about behind their back, or being put in a difficult position—and they unconsciously chose to work overtime.
People use the phrase "I was made to do [X]" in various scenes of life. The words "made to do" allow them to pretend they have handed their choice over to someone else, or that they aren't the ones choosing. But in reality, they are making a clear choice by unconsciously weighing the uncomfortable feelings of declining against the alternative. Sometimes people abandon choice because they don't want to take responsibility, but even "abandoning choice to avoid responsibility" is a choice.
In recent years, we hear about being "made to work" under harsh conditions in black companies. If you hate it, you can just quit. But those people will list reasons why they can't: "I can't quit because of [X]." But that reason is also of their own making. It's not that they "cannot quit," but rather that they are making the choice: "I hate it, but I choose not to quit." If quitting means they cannot make a living or their family will be out on the street, the reason for not quitting lies with them, not the company. They are choosing "not to quit."
People who say "I was forced to do [X]" seem to either not make choices consciously or are trying to escape responsibility. Perhaps they have unconsciously adopted this way of expressing themselves, this stance, and this attitude as a matter of course. But if you think deeply about it, that is incredibly wasteful. It feels as though they are abandoning the ownership of their own life.
If you ever feel "I was forced to do [X]," think very, very carefully. What did you actually want to do? What did you weigh on the scales to place yourself in the position of being "forced"?
And from now on, try to make "conscious choices." Even when you are "forced" to do something, be aware of what you are weighing against what, and choose it consciously. This is very good training for building your "self-axis" (Jibun-jiku).
When you think and decide for yourself, you possess the awareness of the responsibility and resolve of that choice. Even if you want to blame someone else, it becomes very hard to do so. And when you act on your own conscious choices, you have very few regrets.
Life is full of things that don't go well. Most people seem to call this "failure." If you learn nothing from an event that didn't go well, it might indeed be a "failure." But if you learn something, it becomes an "experience." If you don't define it as a "failure" yourself, it is nothing but "experience."
When I was 31 years old, I made a big failure. Or so I thought.
At age 30, my music project in American nursing homes was featured in Japanese newspapers, magazines, television, and radio. I, who had been looked down upon since childhood as a "slightly strange kid," was suddenly being called a "wonderful person" by everyone around me. People expected great things from me next. I lost sight of who I was within those expectations and the (arbitrary) image people had of me. And then, I collapsed. I let people down, missed opportunities, lost my connections, and failed in my obligations to people. For ten years, I kept blaming myself, believing I had made a big failure.
Today, we are in an era where anyone can write a blog and step into the public eye via the internet. I started writing on mixi diary around 2007, and have been running the Crystallize site and blog since 2009. Thankfully, the Crystallize blog has a core group of fans. When I meet people in person at sessions, almost everyone joyfully tells me, "You are exactly the same as the Seina-san on the internet!" The reason I have been able to keep writing diaries and blog posts scattered with typos for nearly ten years, and continue running Crystallize, is what I learned when I collapsed at 31, suffering from the gap between the image others and the public held of me and my own self, and losing sight of myself. It taught me: "On the internet and in public, stay as true to life-size as possible."
There are many things that don't go well. But because they didn't go well, we think. Scattered within those events that didn't go well are chances to think about various things and to learn. What will you grab from them, and how will you engage with them to learn? If you can do that, the idea of "failure" disappears, and it becomes "experience." Do not fear "failure." If you fear "failure" and don't take "action," your "experience" will not grow. By "acting" and "experiencing," your life will change rapidly.
My father was originally a piano teacher, but when I was born, he started a business related to health foods and cosmetics. When I was in junior high school, a certain turning point led him to go into the mountains, and after that, he supported our family by doing work related to past lives and ancestral spirits. Growing up in such an environment, I am probably a highly spiritual person. Yet, the conflict in our family and among my siblings never ceased, and we could not become a happy family. Since my 20s, I had been interested in psychology, but because of the family environment I grew up in, I kept dipping my toes in and out of psychology while remaining in the "spiritual camp." Crystallize started in 2008 with energy healing and readings, and in 2009, I encountered Young Living essential oils. Young Living was a melting pot of the spiritual crowd. Amidst that, my questions and disgust toward self-proclaimed spiritual healers and leaders swelled greatly, more than ever before. Through various experiences, I came to feel that "the difficulty of living cannot be solved by spirituality alone," and my focus shifted from the "spiritual" toward "emotions."